


Miles to go

by mind_the_thorns



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Cal Kestis Needs a Hug, Cal and Cere refuse to face their trauma so it finds them instead, Cere Junda Needs a Hug, Gen, Hurt Cal Kestis, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sickfic, Spoilers, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25521553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mind_the_thorns/pseuds/mind_the_thorns
Summary: A Wyyyschokk spider gets the drop on an exhausted Cal after his triumph over the Ninth Sister on Kashyyyk. Cere and Greez take care of him in the aftermath.
Comments: 25
Kudos: 105





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. This fic is ridiculous. I started writing it on a whim because I decided that while the game itself had a lot of good, quality hurt, it was sort of lacking in the comfort department (20 hours of gameplay and this poor boy only gets ONE hug?? nah). Now it's 10k words (and counting) of extremely self-indulgent Cal whump and I don't know how to stop.
> 
> Spoilers for everything up to the second trip to Kashyyyk, plus vague (for the time being) spoilers for what happened to Cal during Order 66.

There needs to be a word stronger than exhausted, Cal decides as he crouches down on his haunches, unsteady breaths wheezing in and out of him like Greez’s kettle at full boil. Something that sounds like a swear word, preferably. He could use a good swear word right now, and none of the ones he knows are cutting it, including the Huttese ones Prauf’d taught him. He hurts in so many places he’s not even really sure where his individual wounds are, or even if he  _ has _ individual wounds--his body feels like one gigantic bruise. Eventually he decides even crouching takes too much energy, suddenly aware of the muscles in his thighs  _ screaming _ at him, reminding him of all the jumping, climbing, and running he’s done in the last half hour alone, to say nothing of the last couple of weeks. Giving in, he slumps backwards into a full sprawl, BD-1 scampering to the side, trilling in equal parts alarm and indignation as his back hits the ground with a muddy splash.

“Sorry, buddy,” Cal mumbles, resisting the urge to close his eyes. A nap on top of the Origin Tree probably isn’t a very wise idea, what with all the deadly and demonstrably very hungry fauna (and occasionally flora) that roam the branches. The thought of climbing all the way down--down past all the explosive bugs and the giant flying rats (or whatever they actually are) and the spiders (so. many. spiders.)  _ and then _ through an Imperial refinery that may or may not still have hostile Stormtroopers lurking inside--it actually makes him feel physically ill for a second, so he pushes it down and tries to cling to the buzz of adrenaline that still hasn’t completely worn off. 

_ Who knew fighting off an unhinged, sadistic former Jedi built like a freight train with horns would be so exhilarating? _

BD-1 chirps inquisitively when an almost hysterical laugh punches its way out of his mouth. 

“Yeah, I’m good,” Cal says, although he still feels like the  _ Mantis _ landed on him. “We just took down an Inquisitor.” 

The droid beeps again, hopping from foot to foot excitedly.

“Yep, and got our next lead, too,” he grins, though it quickly fades into a grimace. Right now, even sitting up seems like an insurmountable challenge. Thinking about what lies ahead doesn’t exactly fill him with renewed vigor. Another trip to Dathomir to explore a tomb that will probably be full of traps and puzzles, another confrontation with that Nightsister that pretty obviously wants to magick his insides to his outsides, and worse-- _ more kriffing spiders _ . All he wants right now is to be back in his bunk on the  _ Mantis _ so he can sleep for a few decades. That, and a shower. Maybe three showers.

But he  _ finally  _ knows where to find an Astrium. He can  _ finally  _ get into the Vault on Bogano and obtain the holocron, keep it safe from maniacs like the Ninth Sister. Keep those children from being hunted down, keep them from being tortured and twisted into her replacements.

It’s almost enough to get him going again.

Almost.

BD-1 shrieks at him until he opens his eyes. 

“Okay, I’m up, I’m up.” Cal struggles into a sitting position, every square inch of him screaming in protest. Semi-vertical now, he tries to take stock of his body. Nothing seems broken, at least. His ribs--along with most of the rest of him--are definitely bruised, and there’s a shallow but lengthy cut along the back of his right calf, both likely caused by his fall through the floor of that abandoned Woookiee hut. He’s got a few burns across his upper arms and shoulders courtesy of the Ninth Sister’s dual-bladed lightsaber, but they’re more of a nuisance than anything, stinging reminders of a failed block or badly planned feint on his part. The sheer strength behind her blows--both physical and through the Force--have done a real number on his muscles, though, and that’s really the main issue. Even the scant effort of propping himself up makes his arms tremble in exertion. Climbing back down the trunk is going to be tough, if not impossible, especially now that he doesn’t have a pair of wings helping him navigate the sprawling mass of the Origin Tree’s upper reaches.

A pang of guilt claws at his stomach as he glances at the clearing where the giant bird had disappeared. BD-1 had said that creature--a Shyyyo bird--had probably been among the last of his kind, and Cal had gone and put a giant target on its back just by being near it. Sure, it had attacked the Ninth Sister’s ship of its own volition, but that had probably just been animal instinct, a creature defending its territory. This is its nesting ground, after all. Maybe if Cal had just left it alone after healing its wing, it’d still be alive.

Sighing, he turns to BD-1. “Got anymore stim canisters, Beedee? I’m running on empty, here.”

BD-1 hoots mournfully and pops out the tray on the side of his head so Cal can see what’s left, or rather, what isn’t.

Cal does curse this time, a particularly colorful swear that would have made even the scrapyard foreman’s ears turn red (if the foreman’d had ears, that is). A stim might have given him enough energy to at least get down to the refinery, maybe even enough to push him all the way back to the  _ Mantis _ without issue. So much for  _ that  _ plan.

There’s a muffled _ snick  _ as BD-1 pulls the tray back into its proper place. The droid drops his gaze to the ground, fidgeting restlessly, suddenly quiet except for the whirring of his servos. 

“Oh, hey, it’s not your fault, little buddy,” Cal exclaims, immediately reaching out to pat the top of his head, the metal alloy cool and smooth under a healthy coat of swamp grunge. “I should have paid more attention, saved one for an emergency. It’s okay, I’ll figure something else out.”

Mustering his strength, he manages to get his feet under him, but as soon as he takes a step his knees tremble, threatening to send him tumbling back into the mud and weeds. He staggers sideways, and BD-1 is there in a flash, engaging his thrusters to hover up by his shoulder and give him a little nudge in the opposite direction for equilibrium. Droids don’t have facial expressions, but Cal swears the little machine looks concerned for him.

And with good reason. He’s concerned for himself, to be honest. A misstep like that on the journey down and BD-1 won’t be enough to save him--he’d fall a long,  _ long _ way to his death, with plenty of time to think about how stupid he’d been for not holding onto that last stim, for trying something so reckless. No, there’s nothing for it--he’ll have to find somewhere to rest first. Not here, though. It’s too open, and if the Ninth Sister had relayed his location to the Empire at any point before their duel, he’d be a sitting duck for another ambush.

If he can just get down to the lower canopy, there’s enough cover there to provide relative safety--at least from the Empire. BD-1 can wake him if any of the local wildlife gets too close; the droid’s already proven himself to be capable of taking care of himself when necessary. Cal doubts the slyyygs and saavas will be any more keen to tangle with BD-1’s electro-prod than the Bog Rats back on Bogano had been.

He won’t be back by nightful, and Cere will be livid with him when he finally drags himself back to the  _ Mantis _ , but considering he really doesn’t give two fat druks what Cere thinks right now, that’s the very least of his worries.

He opens his mouth to relay his plan, such as it is, to his companion when a sudden, inordinately powerful gust of wind knocks him off his feet again. An enormous shadow passes overhead, and the boughs above creek and crunch ominously under the weight of whatever has just landed on them. Cal’s got his lightsaber ignited and drawn up into a defensive position even as he struggles to his knees, ears ringing, but deactivates it with a surprised shout when he sees the Shyyyo bird peering down at him.

BD-1 gives his own delighted greeting, and Cal translates--although why he thinks the giant bird will understand Basic better than Droid Binary, he’s not sure. Probably better check for a head injury when he gets back to the  _ Mantis. _ “We thought you were dead!”

The Shyyyo bird coos back in what he can only assume is a response. With a gentler flap of its wings, it descends to a branch just beyond the nest where he stands, moving with a grace and fluidity that still baffles Cal. For how big it is, it doesn’t seem to suffer from an ounce of clumsiness. Carefully, it extends its neck through into the glade, lowering its head in what can only be an invitation for him to approach.

Cal stands and staggers over to the creature, a sudden swell of relief making his throat tighten. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he whispers, reaching out and running a hand down the bird’s neck. He pulls back, dismayed, when he sees two large scorch marks further down the animal’s flank: mementos from the Ninth Sister’s TIE Reaper. Luckily only glancing blows, but still painful looking. 

“Can’t heal you this time, girl,” he says, making an educated guess on the bird’s gender--he’s in a nest, after all--and giving her an apologetic stroke on her long, curiously pockmarked beak. The Shyyyo whistles softly and tilts her head to the side to stare down at him with one huge red eye. Cal thinks he sees understanding there, as if she knows everything he’s saying--that, or he definitely has a concussion. 

“Think you’re up to giving me one last ride? I’m kind of stuck.” This time he  _ knows _ she understands what he’s saying, because she makes a soothing sound low in her throat and lowers one enormous wing, elbow joint pointed down--a stepping stool. Cal wonders if maybe she’s Force-sensitive, if she can sense something kindred in him. When he grasps the offered wing and lets her lift him up onto the space between her shoulder blades, he feels very small--in every sense of the word. 

On his back BD-1 gives an appreciative trill, and Cal nods in agreement. “Yeah, me too. Thanks, girl. For everything.”

~~~

It’s probably not a good sign, but Cal actually manages to fall into a light doze as the Shyyyo bird effortlessly glides through the twisting labyrinth of the Origin Tree’s branches, wheeling through the sky in lazy circles as she makes her descent. He’d only put his head down for one moment, intending to rest his eyes and hopefully soothe the pounding headache that had begun to swell behind them. The Shyyyo bird’s movements are so graceful, the rhythm of her wings almost hypnotic--

Weightless--

Falling--

...no...

_ Sliding  _ down the scrapped wing of the ship, only blackness at the end, can’t get a grip on anything, he’s going to die--

Prauf is screaming as he falls--

Cal jolts back into wakefulness to the Shyyyo bird’s piercing cry, his heart pounding and sweat dripping down the back of his neck. Disoriented, he looks around, thinking she’s spotted danger, but the skies around them are clear--no Imperial fighters or swarm of exploding beetles or winged spiders (he hasn’t seen any of those yet but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist). He blinks hard, trying to scrub some feeling back into his face with one hand while he holds tight to the Shyyyo bird’s feathers with the other. He’s never been afraid of heights, but that dream--that  _ nightmare _ \--always gets him. He hasn’t had it in a few weeks, but it always varies--sometimes he catches Prauf, sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes his control of the Force is so poor that he actually manages to shove his friend closer to his doom--and the fact that he’s having it now, on the back of a giant bird flying hundreds of miles above the ground…

His hands are shaking. He holds on a little tighter, hoping his new friend doesn’t mind.

From behind him, BD-1 gives a series of trills. He’s apparently got data entries on large flighted birds tucked away in that memory bank of his, and is now reeling off information about landing patterns and the physics of takeoff for some reason. Cal doesn’t understand for a very long moment, but when he chances a look over the apex of the Shyyyo’s wing, it starts to dawn on him. 

They aren’t hundreds of miles up after all. They’d descended quite a ways while he’d been--sleeping, or whatever that had been. They’re now circling a small lake about two hundred feet up, not gaining or losing any altitude as the Shyyyo masterfully manipulates the air currents around her to keep her aloft. She’s too large to land, he realizes--there isn’t enough open ground on Kashyyyk for her to take off again. That’s why she nests on top of the Origin Tree, so that she can use gravity and thermal updrafts to minimize the amount of strain it would otherwise take a creature of her size to fly.

They’re going to have to jump.

Cal swallows hard. Definitely not a good time to have that dream. 

Nervously, he reaches into his belt for his rebreather. At least with it he knows he can’t drown, even if the fall disorients him. Despite his weakened state, he’s fairly confident he can do this without suffering any further bodily harm. That said, two hundred feet is still a little high, even for a Jedi Padawan, particularly for one as worn out as Cal. As if sensing his anxiety, the Shyyyo trills and angles her wings into a shallow dive. Cal gives her a grateful scratch toward the base of her neck, and gets ready to jump.

The Shyyyo bird’s talons just barely scrape across the tallest part of the canopy as she makes her approach over the lake--it’s roughly about the distance he’d fallen from the  _ Mantis _ during their first trip to the planet, maybe a little higher. Cal takes one last look to gauge his landing before launching himself off the Shyyyo’s back, BD-1 hooting in exhilaration from somewhere behind his ear.. 

There’s no time for fear, real or imagined, as he falls--he hits the water feet first what feels like only seconds later, the impact knocking the breath out of him. Hastily, Cal stuffs the rebreather into his mouth and kicks for the surface, thankful that the lake had been deep enough and he hadn’t been dashed to pieces on unseen rocks or swallowed up by muddy lakebed. The water, deceptively chilly this far down and kept overall quite temperate by the perpetual shade overhead, actually helps clear his head a little, chasing away the last remnants of the nightmare--flashback--whatever it was. It does little to renew his waning strength, though. The rebreather is a welcome relief as he slowly kicks his way upward.

BD-1 is bobbing nearby, waiting for him, when he finally breaches the surface. He whistles hopefully and Cal can’t help but smile as he takes the rebreather out of his mouth and pockets it. “No, buddy, we are  _ definitely  _ not doing that again.”

The droid perches on his chest as Cal slowly backstrokes toward land, letting his body’s buoyancy do most of the work to conserve what little energy he has left. Once ashore he shrugs out of his sodden poncho and attempts to wring at least some of the lakewater out of it, with varying degrees of success. He’s beginning to wish he’d left it behind, camouflage or no camouflage. Kashyyyk during the day is warm enough that he doesn’t really need it for thermal reasons, and now that it’s wet it feels like a block of carbonite around his shoulders.

There’s no time to let it dry out, though. The natural light around him is taking on a red-orange tint, throwing the ground below the canopy into a murky twilight. It’ll be fully dark soon, and he’s not keen on trying to navigate the aptly named Shadowlands at night.

Except that now that he’s looking, he doesn’t appear to be in the Shadowlands at all. Cal scans his surroundings, realizing with some surprise that this particular lake feels somewhat familiar, now that he’s above it and not in it. “Hey, Beedee. Can I see the map? I think I know where we are.”

BD-1 trills affirmatively and points his lenses at the ground to pull up the holomap. A ghostly representation of the area’s topography flickers into sharp relief, the artificial blues and yellows harsh against the muted forest light. Squinting in the gloom, Cal is relieved to see that he’s right--they’re in the Kyyylastaad Basin, just down the zipline from the lonely cluster of Wookiee dwellings and the entrance to the refinery. From here, it’s only a twenty minute trek back to the  _ Mantis _ \--less if the Imps haven’t regrouped in his absence.

It’s too dark to see, and she’s probably long gone by now, but Cal still turns toward the sky and waves in gratitude. It shouldn’t surprise him anymore, but somehow the Shyyyo had known exactly where to take him.

Well, maybe not exactly. He can think of at least one better place. Cal entertains himself with the idea of suddenly showing up at the cargo pad on the back of an enormous, fierce-looking winged monster as he trudges his way up the small incline leading to the zipline structure. The look on Greez’s face would have been priceless. A small payback for getting him kidnapped by the Haxion Brood--not that he really wants to make Greez feel more guilty than he already does. The Latero is surprisingly open about his feelings when he wants to be, and beneath his curmudgeonly exterior is a gentle soul who clearly feels truly contrite over what happened.

If only he could say the same about Cere, Cal thinks, frowning. His new mentor (mentor, he reinforces the word firmly, not  _ master _ ) has shown absolutely no signs of opening up to him. If anything, she’s more closed off to him than ever. Sure, she seems to feel regret--regret that he knows the truth now, that she can’t keep him in the dark any longer. He’s not really sure what upsets him more: the idea that Cere really had done the unthinkable--that she had betrayed her Padawan, betrayed that bond between master and apprentice--or that she had lied to him about it and told him that Trilla had died in the Purge. 

Part of him likes to think Master Tapal would never have--

A familiar pain explodes in his chest, the near physical force of it staggering him with a sudden brilliant white hot stab of guilt and fear. He stops walking, grinding to a halt so abruptly that BD-1 almost topples off his shoulder. Suddenly it’s hard to take a full breath, like he’s back up on the very summit of the Origin Tree, the air simultaneously too thin and too close. 

It’s such a lie--he knows exactly why it bothers him so much. 

He’s just as guilty as Cere is--of betrayal, of breaking a bond that never should have been severed.

His fault.

Gasping, Cal tries to think of something else, anything else, to bury that memory down deep where it belongs, chained up and hidden in the dark like it’s been for the last five years. Traitorously, his brain reminds him again of Prauf’s face, this time his anguished expression as Trilla had thrust her lightsaber through his heart.

His fault.

BD-1 bleats at him, nudging his head gently into Cal’s chin.

“I’m okay,” he says, trying to wrest his emotions back in check. He’s better than this, he knows he is. He’s just tired. “Just...my head started hurting a bit, that’s all. Sorry, let’s… let’s keep going. Ready to run me up that zipline?”

The droid beeps at him, thoroughly unconvinced and sounding downright insulted that he’d been given such a flimsy excuse, but obediently jumps up to grip the cable with both feet so that Cal can hang on to him. It’s a long and steep ascent back up to the abandoned huts, and Cal isn’t looking forward to another plunge into the lake if he should lose his grip and fall, but luckily the motor he’d installed in BD-1 back at the Imperial dig site on Zeffo does the job quick enough that even his failing strength is enough to get him back onto solid ground without incident.

He still staggers a bit when BD-1 drops him the scant few inches to the derelict wooden planks of the hut, both from exhaustion and relief. The refinery, normally a repulsive sight--a glinting, ugly gray scar against the lush greenery of Kashyyyk--now looks like the most beautiful thing in the world to him, and it’s so  _ close _ . Just one vine swing across the broken bridge near the fallen AT-AT and he’ll be back inside its metal walls. His earlier explorations of the place had afforded a fabulous boon--a secret maintenance passage along the eastern exterior corridor. It’ll take him almost directly back to the elevator leading up to the staging area where he’d last seen Saw Gerrera and his Partisans. From there, he can take the tram all the way back through the forest trench to the cargo pad.

Elevators and trams mean he can  _ finally _ rest for a bit. No more crazy leaps onto bioluminescent trampoline plants, no more climbing tree branches at a breakneck pace to get away from flesh eating snake-vines, and, Force willing, no more spiders.

Cal will never tell him to his face, but he’s beginning to agree with Greez about the whole nature thing.

He’s not paying attention, too focused on his goal, on his desire to  _ get out of this place _ , that not even BD-1’s apprehensive trill or the Force suddenly pulsing around him-- _ danger! move!-- _ are enough of an advanced warning for him to react to the new threat. 

Cal grunts as one of his shuffling steps sticks to the ground in a way he definitely isn’t expecting, and in the time it takes him to look down and realize that the wispy white substance blanketing the floor of the old walkway  _ definitely isn’t moss _ , it’s too late.

An gargantuan Wyyyschokk spider--of course,  _ of course  _ it’s a kriffing spider--drops out of the canopy directly on top of him, the not-inconsequential weight of its bulk driving him toward the web covered ground. Cal instinctively turns mid-fall, fear driving him despite his best efforts to think calmly, clearly. If he gets trapped facedown in that sticky mire, it’ll all be over. His hips twist but his legs don’t; the foot still glued to the ground makes a horrible muted popping sound, twisted in a direction it clearly doesn’t want to go, and skittering, white hot pain lances up Cal’s leg. He falls onto his back with a cry, fumbling at his hip for his lightsaber.

The Wyyyshcokk is relentless, giving him no time to recover. It lunges for him with shocking, almost preternatural speed, and Cal has no time to ignite his blade--in desperation, he catches the gnashing mandibles with both hands, straining to keep them away from his vulnerable neck. The Wyyyschokk is stronger and the thing knows it. It shrieks and digs its wickedly sharp, barbed legs into floorboards, bearing down on him with crushing force.

Cal kicks wildly at its soft underbelly with his good leg, managing to put some distance between them when the Wyyyschokk rears back--though more in fury than in pain. It’s just enough of an opening for him to thrust out his left hand and  _ shove _ with all his might.

His might, as it turns out, is pretty pathetic right now. Between the fatigue and the fear racing through him, his control over the Force is weak, almost non-existent. The power is all around him, but he can’t reach it; it slips through his fingers like water, and the Wyyyschokk only skids back a few feet, leaving deep gouges in the wooden planks.

For a second, all he can see is a wall of white and black faces--helmets--and the muzzles of a dozen blaster rifles, and behind him his Master is screaming because he’s not acting fast enough, he’s not  _ good _ enough, not  _ strong _ enough--

The Wyyyschokk breaks through the flashback by lunging forward again and clamping its mandibles around his outstretched arm, driving its fangs deep into his flesh.

Cal howls in pain, feeling his entire arm light up with a fiery agony far worse than any blaster or lightsaber burn. Something that feels like acid flows from the bite and into his veins, traveling almost immediately to every nerve, every synapse--every inch of him ignites. It’s  _ inside _ him and it's burning him alive--

Distantly, he hears BD-1 shrieking, and he tries to find the words to tell the droid to run, to get to safety, but his mind whites out for a second, desperate to get away from the pain.

Then, a low whine followed by a loud  _ pop _ from somewhere behind him. The Wyyyschokk screeches and suddenly withdraws. Cal nearly blacks out again from the pain of its fangs ripping free from his arm, but he knows BD-1 is doing something to help him, and that something is very likely to get the droid killed if Cal can’t get his act together. Sure enough, when he wrenches his eyes open, he sees his faithful companion advancing on the spider, so tiny compared to the beast’s hulking mass, but when it shrieks at him, BD-1 only chirps back furiously and lets off another blinding flash from his sensors. The bright white light hits the Wyyyschokk at full blast and it retreats further, fumbling from side to side as it searches blindly for its prey.

It’s not going to be enough to drive the thing off completely, Cal knows. It’s going to get its bearings back and when it does, it will destroy BD-1 utterly. The Force--or maybe its just his own morbid imagination--shows him how the next few seconds will play out, how the spider will shake off the next strobe pulse, enraged by its prey’s resistance. How it’ll spear BD-1’s defenseless body with one of its vibro-shiv sharp legs and fling him off into the water below.

A powerful rush of adrenaline floods through him, blocking out the worst of the pain momentarily, giving him enough strength to wrestle out of the poncho and free himself from the tangled mass of webbing on the ground. A swipe of his lightsaber--now in his hand and blazing, though he has no memory of grabbing it--frees his captured foot and he surges forward with a ragged cry, slicing through all the legs on the Wyyyschokk’s right side just as it prepares to pounce on BD-1. The spider screams and hisses, vile yellow ichor spewing forth from its severed limbs. Still alive, it turns its fury on Cal--

And charges face first into the reverse end of his saber just as Cal ignites it.

It’s remaining legs twitch, then go still.

Cal has the presence of mind to deactivate his saber and limp some distance away from the still sizzling corpse before he collapses, first to his knees, then onto his side when the world tilts off its axis and spins dizzyingly around him. The pain is...everywhere, in every part of him. He can feel the venom burning its way through him, sped along every avenue of his body by the frantic pounding of his heart. He can’t stop shaking, full body tremors that make his bones ache. The small part of his mind still capable of rational thought scrambles to remember whether or not Wyyyschokk venom is fatal, and if there’s an anti-venom, but everything is jumbled and blurred. His mouth tastes like blood.

He has to get up. He has to get back to the  _ Mantis _ .

He has to…

BD-1 is chirping and whistling at him, so fast and frantic that it sounds almost as incomprehensible as Shyriiwook, but the tone is pretty clear. Cal is slipping, is letting himself slip.

“Sorry, buddy,” Cal hears himself say, the words slurred and indistinct. He trails off uncertainly, suddenly not sure what he’s apologizing for. Blackness is creeping in at the corners of his vision, and there’s a whining noise coming from somewhere far away, like the static on Cere’s comms when she’s trying to splice Imperial encryptions.

Cere. 

She’ll never be able to get into the Vault. Cal’s going to take the knowledge of the Astrium’s location to his grave because he’d been too proud, too stubborn, too  _ stupid _ , should have just pinged her comm to tell her...tell her--

His fault. 

Cal loses time. He floats for a while, drifting in a blaze of pain, at times knowing exactly where he is and at others--

The training deck on the  _ Albedo Brave. _ He’s just killed the officer who’d given him a high five earlier that morning. His wrist still stings from the impact of redirecting the blaster bolt that has been aimed at his heart. 

The cantina on Bracca. It’s raining, it’s always raining. Tomorrow they’re gonna scrap a Venator-class battleship, newly arrived to the yard, and Prauf keeps asking why he looks so green? Probably the whiskey, he says.

BD-1 beeps a query at him.. 

“No more whiskey,” Cal says, or maybe he doesn’t.

The kitchen table onboard the  _ Mantis.  _ Greez’s cooking. Cere’s hallikset music drifting down the corridors when she thinks he and Greez have gone to bed.

An escape pod plummeting toward the unknown.

Someone says his name.

He’s been hearing voices for a while now--Cere, Greez, BD-1, Prauf,  _ Master _ \--but this time the voices are accompanied by a soft touch on his shoulder. 

“--looks bad. Need...him back to--”

Snatches of conversation. A woman in clipped tones. A rumbling, throaty bark. The constant beeps and whines of BD-1.

He feels himself being lifted off the ground by impossibly strong arms, and a distressed moan makes its way out of his throat before he can think to stop it.

“...okay, Cal...safe. Gonna get...here. Hang on.”

Hang on. 

He’s too high up--he’s going to fall, going to slide off the edge of--the edge of…

Darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Night has fallen on Kashyyyk.

Cere sighs and pulls off her headset, massaging her temples with both hands. Night has fallen, and they haven’t received any word from Cal. She doesn’t usually make it a habit to enforce a time table for their missions, but this time she had insisted: they’ll leave Kashyyyk within four standard hours--regardless of whether or not Tarfful can be found. With the Partisans all but wiped out and the refinery under Imperial control again, this infiltration carries a much greater risk than it had last time. They can’t afford to spend too much time here, or all of them will risk being captured by the Empire.

Without anything better to do except wait, she’d been monitoring Imperial transmissions at her comm station. About an hour ago, she’d intercepted a message to the refinery from an inbound TIE Reaper--the Ninth Sister had arrived on Kashyyyk once again. She hasn’t heard anything since then, which she tries to tell herself is a good thing, but the knot of worry in her gut just keeps twisting tighter and tighter. The only thing keeping Cere from hailing Cal’s comm is the thought that he might be hiding from the hulking Dowutin Inquisitor somewhere out there in the dark, and she can’t risk giving away his position.

That, and--she’s pretty sure he won’t answer her, anway.

A sudden clatter of pots and pans from the galley makes her jump. The movement twinges her lower back, which helpfully reminds her that she’s getting a little too old to sit hunched over a comm station for prolonged periods of time. Standing, she stretches (wincing as what sounds like every bone in her spine cracks) and steps out into the common room to investigate the clamour. 

Alerted by the sound of her footsteps, Greez emerges from the depths of the galley cabinets, an old frypan in one left hand and a large wooden spoon in the other. “Oh, hey--just doing some re-organizing. Thought someone had taken my good spoon again.”

She eyes the cutlery. “Well, thank goodness you’ve found it. Crisis averted.”

“What, this piece of junk?” He tosses it onto the table as if it’s offended him. “No, no, this ain’t my good spoon. I keep my my good spoon in a secret location to keep it safe from people who might wanna abuse its power.”

“ _Secret location_ in this case meaning lost?”

Greez’s voice echoes from under the cabinets as he resumes rearranging what Cere can only assume had previously been a perfectly organized set of cookware. Without comms to monitor, Greez has been inventing tasks to keep himself busy for the last hour or so. “Hey, I never lose things. I just put them places for my future self to find later.”

Cere hums noncommittally, deciding not to comment. There’s a pause, and then--

“Any word from the kid?”

Cere pinches the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “No, Greez. Not since the last time you asked me. Ten minutes ago.”

“Sheesh, touchy,” Greez says. Evidently satisfied with the state of the cabinets, he shuffles past her onto the bridge. He levers himself into his captain’s chair to fiddle mindlessly with one of the control sensors. “Sorry for being anxious to leave. This planet is only teeming with hundreds of ugly monsters that would love to have a Latero for lunch. Not to mention the Imperials whose doorstep we more or less happen to be parked on.”

She doesn’t need the Force to tell her that Greez’s anxieties are far more centered around their wayward red-headed companion than any monster or Stormtrooper, not with the way his eyes keeps drifting to the empty co-pilot’s seat as he makes his adjustments. He won’t appreciate knowing that she shares his concerns, though. They can’t both be worried, because that would mean something is wrong. “Cal will be fine. He’ll come back soon, I’m sure of it. We just have to be patient.”

Greez’s hands still on the controls. “I don’t like the idea of him being out there alone with that Inquisitor on his trail. She was there when we found him back on that scrapheap--a Dowutin, right? Those guys are horrifying, basically walking battering rams. I mean, she ain’t got nothing on the Second Sister, but still--”

Cere sucks in a breath, and Greez winces, cutting himself off.

Neither of them say anything for a long moment. 

“If the Inquisitors had captured Cal, we would know,” Cere finally says, gesturing at her comm station. “I can only assume she can’t find him. The Shadowlands are vast.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and the kid will take her out. One less homicidal threat to deal with, you know?”

Unbidden, an image of Cal running Trilla through with his lightsaber flashes through her mind. She swallows hard. “Maybe.”

Greez clears his throat awkwardly, sliding out of his chair after a few more unnecessary tweaks to the console. “Guess I’ll go get started on some grub for when the kid gets back. Any requests?”

Cere is too full of nervous energy to be hungry. The thought of anything heavier than a cup of bone broth makes her stomach churn, but she imagines Cal will be ravenous. He usually is--his time on Bracca had seemingly given him a healthy appreciation for most food, even Greez’s occasionally questionable cooking. “Anything you’ve got on hand will do fine.”

“Okay, well, now that you’ve said that, you just gave up your right to complain if you don’t like it,” Greez says, pointing a stern finger at her as he shuffles out of the cockpit and into the galley. “Speak up or go hungry, that’s what my great-grandmother used to say.”

Cere half smiles at that, but her humor fades quickly when she notices a light on the overhead dashboard flashing insistently. An encrypted message--from the same channel that had called them here in the first place.

“Greez,” she barks, surging out of the cockpit and to the Holotable. Without waiting for the Latero to join her, she patches the channel through to the _Mantis’s_ holoprojector. The fuzzy, washed out image of a woman appears before her. She’d met Mari Kosan on their first mission to Kashyyyk, but the woman’s primary point of contact thus far had really been Cal. Does she think he's already back with them? Cere can conceive of several reasons why the guerilla fighter might be hailing them--none of them good.

“Mari.” She doesn’t bother keeping the apprehension out of her voice.

The other woman’s expression is hard to read thanks to the intermittent glitching of the holoprojector, but her voice is clearly troubled. “Cere. Sorry for the encryption--I would have used Cal’s comm but I wasn’t sure if the channel was secure or not.”

Cere exchanges a look with Greez, feeling her heart skip in her chest. “Cal’s still with you? Did you not find Tarfful?”

“No, we did. I can only assume Cal found what he was looking for on top of the Origin Tree--looks like he was trying to make his way back to your position when Choyyssyk and I found him. He’s in pretty rough shape.”

Cere’s hands clench involuntarily; beside her, Greez is gripping the holoprojector table stabilizer ring hard enough to make the durasteel creak. “What happened?” she says, straining to keep her voice calm.

Mari looks over her shoulder for a second, nodding at someone they can’t see, before turning back to Cere. “Not totally sure myself. We found him unconscious in the Basin with his droid. Looks like a Wyyyschokk got him. Listen--he’s safe with us for now; but I think we’d better try and coordinate an extraction as soon as possible. One of our reconnaissance units overheard some Imps at the refinery--sounds like they’re starting to organize units to sweep the woods again, looking for escaped Wookiees. It won’t be long before they find the _Mantis.”_

It’s killing her, not knowing exactly what condition Cal is in, but this new threat takes immediate precedence. “We’d better get airborne,” she says to Greez, glancing down at him.

The Latero shrugs helplessly. “Look, I’m flattered you both think I’m some kind of amazingly gifted pilot--and you’re not wrong!--but I can’t exactly land her on top of trees. I’m gonna need something a little flatter and a little less, you know, horrifyingly unstable.”

“There’s another abandoned Imperial landing pad not far from our position--I’m sending the coordinates now. Apparently they tried fortifying a communications base closer to the Shadowlands a few months ago but gave up on it pretty quickly.” Mari grins wryly. “Guess the wildlife didn’t agree with them.” 

“Mari.” Cere can’t stand it any longer. She squares her shoulders, steeling herself. “How bad is it?”

The other woman’s grin falters. There’s a series of barks and moans in the background, and she nods along in agreement. “Choyyssyk says Wyyyschokk venom isn’t typically fatal, but it is rough on the body. One of my men was bitten right before the convoy ambush. He lived, but it wasn’t pretty. Took almost a week to get him back on his feet. Cal will have an easier time of it on the _Mantis_ for sure.”

“We’re on our way,” Cere says, as Greez hustles into the cockpit with a speed fairly uncommon for him, and without his customary set of complaints. “Thank you, Mari.”

“My pleasure,” she says. The transmission crackles, then dies, Mari’s image winking out.

Cere hurries to the bridge to strap herself in just as Greez starts the _Mantis’s_ takeoff sequence. “We’ll be there in ten, fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Good.”

Greez’s hands are steady on the controls, but there’s a definite note of unease in his voice as he maneuvers the ship up and out over the trees, flying at a steady clip just above the boughs. “I almost hate to ask, but Mari kept talking about venom so...what the hell is Wyyyschokk?”

Cere takes a deep breath and exhales slowly through her nose. “It’s a giant spider.”

The oath he spits out isn’t in a language she’s familiar with, but the sentiment is pretty plain. “I told the kid that this much nature is bad news,” he mutters, then, in an even lower voice-- “He better be all right.”

She turns to catch his gaze, and gives what she hopes is a reassuring nod. “We’ll make sure of it.

~~~

True to his word, Greez has them descending on a somewhat overgrown landing pad in less than fifteen minutes. Unlike the refinery, this place hasn’t seen any traffic in quite some time, although it’s pretty clear why: Mari hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d implied that this part of the forest is far more hostile. Cere glances down at the readout in front of her, helpfully displaying all manner of deadly forest lifeforms just on the border of the landing pad, lurking in the shadows--and tactfully decides not to tell Greez.

She can only hope Mari and Choyyssyk don’t have any trouble reaching them, but even as the worry takes hold in the back of her mind, she sees them. They’re still too high to make out the finer details, but a woman in combat fatigues and a Wookiee with tawny brown fur are waiting on the perimeter of the pad, just on the edge of the forest. Cere’s eyes immediately zero in on the much smaller form cradled in the Wookiee’s arms, and she bites her lip, silently willing Greez to land faster.

Greez must have noticed also, because he drops the _Mantis_ down onto the pad without any of his usual finesse, the ship’s landing gear giving an almighty groan of protest. They’re both out the door as quickly as possible--Cere doesn’t even wait for the ramp to extend fully before she jumps down onto the metal deck with a hollow thud. 

Mari and Choyyssyk jog over to meet them--or rather Mari jogs to keep in step with the Wookiee, whose great strides close the distance between them in an effortless and surprisingly nimble gait. 

“Glad you made it,” she says. “Just in time, too--the Imps are in rare form today. They’re mobilizing much quicker than we anticipated.”

Perched on Mari’s shoulder, BD-1 beeps in greeting and launches himself into Cere’s arms.

She catches him numbly, barely hearing the other woman’s words. All of her concentration is on the red-headed boy lying limply in Choyyssyk’s arms. He’s so pale, paler than usual--even his freckles seem to have faded, though the scars on his nose, lip, and jaw are so red by comparison they almost look fresh. Even unconscious, he twitches and moans, shifting restlessly as if trying to escape from something--or someone. He’s missing his customary poncho, Cere notices suddenly, horrified to see how incredibly small he looks without it.

From somewhere near her elbow, Greez makes a sound like he’s been kicked in the gut. “ _Kriff,_ kid, what did you do to yourself?”

Kid--Greez’s nickname for him suddenly makes her want to vomit. Has she ever asked Cal how old he is? She can’t remember. When they’d met, it hadn’t seemed relevant. She’d been so overjoyed to have finally found someone strong enough in the Force to access the Vault, and even afterward, Cal hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with personal details. She knows he’s spent the last five years on Bracca, but how old had he been when the Purge had happened? Looking at him now, her whole body goes numb. He can’t be much older than Trilla had been when she--when they--Force, he might even be _younger_ \--

She jumps when Mari puts a hand on her arm. Cere tears her gaze from Cal’s face to look at her; the other woman nods in understanding. “He’ll be okay. He’s a fighter--you should have seen what he did to the Wyyyschokk.”

This actually pulls a tired small from her. It’s not very Jedi-like of her, but she’s glad the thing that did this is dead.

Choyyssyk rumbles softly; Mari translates.

“Choyyssyk will get him settled for you, then we need to get going.”

“Right.” Cere says, mentally reprimanding herself for the temporary lapse in discipline. “Thank you again, both of you. Not just for this, but for finding Tarfful as well. I understand the risk you took in helping us and I won’t forget it.”

“Don’t mention it,” Mari says, falling in step behind her and she and Greez lead the two back into the _Mantis_. “It’s not every day you get to help the Jedi, right?”

There’s an implied plural in there, a question that Mari is clearly curious about, but Cere doesn’t comment. She leads them back to the sleeping quarters, but instead of directing them to the engine room, where Cal’s cot is, she stops in front of her own door. For some reason, the idea of Cal recovering from this ordeal in his usual cramped cubby in the bowels of the ship is unbearable to her. Her own quarters are hardly luxurious, but they are moderately more spacious and, she hopes, more comfortable. 

The door hisses open at her prompting, and she steps inside first to lower the compartment that houses her sleeping cot. The mattress has a layer of gel-foam beneath the fabric--she remembers Greez bragging to her about the accommodations as a selling point when she’d hired his charter. It’s a little outdated, but like everything else on the _Mantis,_ it’s been well maintained. “Put him here, please.”

It’s a tight squeeze for Choyyssyk. The Wookiee stoops so low he’s practically bent in half, and though Cere can’t understand Shyriiwook, she feels pretty confident that the low grunt of annoyance is directed at whoever manufactured the door, obviously not built with taller species in mind. Still, his movements have a gentleness that belie his size; he’s clearly making every effort not to jostle Cal as he shuffles toward the cot and carefully sets down his burden. BD-1 hops from her grasp and onto the foot of the bed, chirping forlornly when Cal gives a quiet groan of pain. For a second, Cere thinks he might be coming around, but he quickly settles again, his only outward signs of life his labored breathing and an occasional involuntary twitch.

From the doorway, Greez clears his throat and says, “I’ll get our takeoff sequence going.”

Choyyssyk hoots and quickly retreats out of the too-small room, Mari and Cere following behind him.

“Can we drop you off anywhere?” Cere offers, then amends, when Greez starts squawking from the cockpit about trees and instability, “assuming we can reach it?”

At the rampway, Mari gives her the Partisan’s salute and another warm smile. “No, but thank you. We’ll head back to the others from here. Be safe, everyone. I don’t want this to be the last we see of each other.”

“Take care of yourself, Mari. And thank you.”

Choyyssyk gives a melancholic sounding goodbye growl of his own, and the two make their way down the ramp and back onto the pad. Once they’re clear, Greez engages the repulsorlift engines to get them airborne, and Cere shuts the hatch with a sharp hiss before joining him on the bridge.

“Got an idea of where I should be taking us?” the Latero says, a little louder than normal to be heard over the hum of the engines. Beneath their feet, the greenery of Kashyyyk quickly fades into the vast oblivion of open space. “I have a few friends who still owe me some favors. One of ‘em might be able to find us a medical facility mid-Core that won’t immediately sell us to the highest bidder.”

Cere considers it for a second, but shakes her head. “No, we’d better not risk it. Not unless we have to. Set a course for Bogano--it’ll be safe enough for the time being.”

Greez nods and makes the necessary adjustments. The stars stretch endlessly before them for a long moment, then the _Mantis_ rockets forward into hyperspace. “Greezy money, baby,” he mutters, then twists in his seat to look back at Cere. “I got her on auto-pilot if you want some help with the kid. Extra- _extra_ pair of hands and all that.” 

“I should be able to handle it,” she finds herself saying, suddenly acutely aware of how badly she wants to be alone right right now. Greez looks a bit crestfallen, so she hastens to add, “I’ll send Beedee to you if I need anything. In the meantime, it would help if you could try to dig up any existing information on Wyyyschokk venom. Give us a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

“Yeah, sure, of course,” he says, immediately keen on the idea. “You know, my great-grandmother always used to say I shoulda been a scholar. Said I had a real knack for the whole research thing, you know? Reading doesn’t pay real well, though, so…” Greez trails off, glancing at the crew cabins with renewed energy. “Anyway, yeah, you just shout if you need anything. I’ll be right here.”

“Thanks, Greez.”

On her way back to her quarters, Cere gathers everything she thinks she’s likely to need: the _Mantis’s_ standard issue medkit, an extra therma-blanket from their emergency supplies, a vacuu-flask filled to the brim with water from the ‘fresher, and a large, empty plasteel bucket Greez occasionally uses for storing his seedlings when the terrarium requires maintenance. Depositing her armful of supplies on the small unused desk in the corner of the room, she gingerly sets the bucket upside down next to her cot, using it as a makeshift seat as she surveys the task before her.

This will be easiest if she can treat this like something impersonal, she decides, a mission she needs to complete to achieve her goal. That is, assuming she can tamp down personal attachment, pretend like the corpse-pale form lying in her bed is a stranger, isn’t _Cal._

It surprises her a little how difficult this is to do, especially when Cal shivers and mumbles, “ _Master_ ,” in a mixture of grief and regret so achingly familiar that her heart actually skips a beat. Without thinking, Cere leans forward and runs her fingers through his hair, smoothing errands strands from his forehead, feeling the heat of a fever gathering there. His hair is slightly damp, she notices with a small frown--and so is the rest of him, she discovers, after a cursory check of his clothing. 

“Beedee,” she says to the little droid, still perched, stalwart, on the edge of the bed, “there’s a control panel in the engine room that patches into the thermostats for each of these cabins. Could you raise the temperature in mine by a few degrees, please?”

BD-1 trill enthusiastically, giving her a salute with one of his feet, and rushes off to do her bidding.

Under normal circumstances, she would probably catch some flak from Greez for this, something about fuel consumption and how the _Mantis_ isn’t a floating day spa (although the ship _is_ , technically, a luxury yacht). At the moment, however, she doubts he’ll say anything, and sure enough, a few moments later she feels the air around her start to warm without so much as a peep from her captain.

Satisfied, she sets to work stripping Cal of his wet clothes, starting with his grime encrusted boots. The rigger’s uniform (which he still wears, despite Greez’s repeated offers to find him something else during one of their supply runs) peels back piece by piece, revealing pallid skin marked almost everywhere by fresh bruises and old scars. Although the thought doesn’t bother her--she’s far too old to be embarrassed by naked bodies--she doesn’t completely undress him, leaving him in his undergarments for now. Cal will be mortified enough as it is when he wakes, but knowing his dignity had been preserved might ease the sting to his pride. After years of fending for himself on a planet where very few cared if he lived or died, it’s been her observation that the boy is used to doing everything on his own, never expecting any help from anyone.

And certainly not from her, she thinks with a small sigh. He’d been so angry with her after they’d rescued him from Ordo Eris. No--not angry. Anger she could have dealt with. Anger she had expected, understood--welcomed, even. She can defend herself against anger. It had been the _betrayal_ in his eyes that had truly gotten to her--as strong and as fresh as if he’d been in those caves with them that day. As if he knew exactly what she had done, what she had wrought.

Cere slumps in her seat, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. At first, she’d been just as upset, incensed by the idea that this boy, a former Padawan--no, a scrap rat from a backwater planet--could judge her actions so easily. How could he know--how could he _possibly_ understand what she had gone through? He couldn’t, and yet she had seen the looks he’d shot her on the journey to Kashyyyk, when he thought she couldn’t see. Like he was _disappointed_ in her for--what? For not being strong enough to resist Imperial torture? For turning, however briefly, to the dark side after seeing her Padawan, _her Trilla_ , with nothing but hatred and contempt in her heart? Yes, she had been angry at Cal for daring to look at her like that. 

As if he could possibly think less of her than she already thinks of herself. 

She realizes now that she’d made a mistake in letting him walk off the _Mantis_ without first addressing the bantha in the room. Cal doesn’t understand, because Cere hadn’t _told_ him, hadn’t explained. She had lied because it had been easiest, but it had probably been the worst possible thing she could have done. Part of her wonders if Cal would have reacted the same way if she’d just told him the truth the moment he’d asked about her Padawan. But she hadn’t, and now she’ll never know. She can only hope to set things straight between them after he recovers. That he’ll listen to her and let her gain his trust back.

They still have a mission to complete, and they’ll need to work together to see it through. For now, though, she lets herself forget about everything--the Vault, the tombs, Cordova, the Inquisitors--and focuses solely on the task at hand. Cal has managed to accumulate an impression collection of wounds aside from the Wyyyschokk bite. Cere laments the _Mantis’s_ lack of a proper medical facility as she manually checks for broken bones underneath all the bruising. As far as she can tell, he hasn’t fractured anything, although his right ankle looks sprained at the very least. She’d need a mediscanner to be totally sure, but the medkit does at least come with a chill pac that will help with the swelling.

The lightsaber burns on his arms give her pause. He’d encountered the Ninth Sister after all, then--she doesn’t remember seeing these injuries after the Ordo Eris rescue, although to be fair, he probably wouldn’t have told her about them, since that would mean they’d come from Trilla. Cere shakes herself, banishing the dark thoughts that wash over her. The burns are superficial, either way, nothing that should cause any problems. Most of them are already starting to scab over; a quick spritz of bacta spray is all they need to finish healing. A similar treatment is all that’s needed for his various cuts and scrapes as well.

His left arm is another story entirely. The bite itself is grisly--two puncture wounds, each one a little over half an inch in diameter, and so deep she can see a glint of white bone glimmering wetly beneath the blood and pus. His entire forearm is bruised, like it had been crushed under a heavy weight, and the skin is puffy and hot to the touch. She snaps on a pair of gloves from the medkit, thankful for her strong stomach (and even more thankful she hadn’t let Greez assist her--the Latero has a surprisingly delicate constitution). The medkit has bacta patches that will keep infection at bay while the wounds heal, but they need to be cleaned first. She gingerly pulls the injured arm into her lap and gets to work.

She’s finished with the first puncture and is fetching a fresh antiseptic wipe to start in on the second when Cal stirs. Cere pauses, hoping he’ll settle again like before--instead, he jolts into full wakefulness with a pained gasp. His eyes are half-lidded, but she can still see the fever in them, dulling the normally bright green color.

“Cal? Are you with me?” Cere leans forward as much as she can with his arm still in her lap, trying to catch his wandering gaze. He seems to be having trouble focusing on her face, alternating between hovering somewhere just over her shoulder and back.

“Master?” he says again, brows furrowing. His mouth works, like he wants to say more, but nothing but a confused, pained rasp comes out as he continues to stare at her--stare _through_ her.

Cere’s insides twist uncomfortably. She doesn’t have the heart to correct him, but it seems just as cruel to pretend. She tries to smile in what she hopes is a comforting manner. “It’s okay, Cal. You’re safe now. I’m just cleaning out your wound.”

He hisses when she gently turns his wrist over to start in on the second puncture, his fingers clenching as he reflexively tries to pull away. It’s easy to hold him still--too easy.

“I’m almost finished,” she soothes, trying to be thorough but also swift. “Stay still.” 

Cal squeezes his eyes shut again, turning his head away from her ministrations to face the cabin wall. “It _burns._ ”

She doubts he means just the antiseptic wipe. “I know. It’s almost over, I promise.”

Hopefully Greez will have some useful information about this venom soon. She hates the idea that she might be lying to him. Mari had said it had taken her fellow soldier a week to recover--she can only hope that Cal will have an easier time of it, either due to their aid or his own resilient nature.

 _You could help him recover much faster,_ her traitorous thoughts remind her, _if you weren’t such a coward. You could help him heal._

Cere shakes her head, as if someone had made the suggestion out loud. The amount of control it would take to help him into a healing trance would be immense; it would require her to use the Force with a dexterity and finesse she hasn’t attempted in five years. If she were still a Jedi, perhaps--but no, she can’t risk it. Not even for Cal. Even now, she can feel the pull of darker powers, lying in wait like a quiescent snake, ready to coil around her the moment she lets down her guard. If she opens that door and steps through, she’s not confident she’ll be able to come back.

More importantly, placing someone else in a healing trance requires unconditional trust on behalf of both parties. A master could easily induce one in her apprentice, but Cal isn’t--and has never been--her Padawan. There’s no telling if it would even work, if he would even let her. Perhaps before Trilla had gotten her claws into him, planted the seed of doubt in his mind, but now...

She tries not to think about how the seed never would have sprouted if she had just been honest with him from the beginning. 

He’ll be all right, she reasons, simultaneously feeling wretched for her complacency. The venom isn’t killing him, after all.

 _But he’ll suffer. He_ is _suffering._

As if reading her thoughts--or picking up on her emotions--Cal twists in her grip again, shuddering. “Master...Master, I’m sorry....”

Cere holds him still as gently as she can, quietly shushing his distressed cries. Mentally, she works on fortifying her barriers, annoyed with herself for projecting like that, as if she were some untrained youngling in a crisis. Once her thoughts are shielded again, Cal seems to drift back into a state of fitful unconsciousness. She refocuses all of her attention to the bite wounds with fierce determination, unwilling to let her thoughts stray again--for both of their sakes.

She’s just finished up taping bacta patches to Cal’s forearm when her door slides open. Greez stands in the doorway, a datapad in one hand. BD-1, Cere notes with some measure of surprise, is perched on his shoulder.

He follows her gaze to the little droid and smirks, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, don’t say it. Turns out this little guy’s pretty handy at the whole research thing. Not as good as me, of course, but still pretty helpful.”

“Glad to see you’re playing nice in my absence,” Cere says dryly. She peels off her gloves and tosses them into the garbage chute. “I take it you’ve found something?”

Greez holds up the datapad. “Yeah, uh...you wanna discuss it here, or…?” He trails off, dark eyes fixed on Cal’s bare, bruised chest.

Cere wipes her palms on her knees and stands. “We should let him sleep for now. Let’s talk in the common area.” Leaning over, she pulls the therma-blanket up around Cal’s shoulders and smooths his hair back again. It’s still a bit damp, but the heater is helping. 

In the corridor, Greez is giving her a peculiar look. She blinks at him, trying to read his expression. “What is it?” 

“Nothing, nothing. Just...didn’t realize you could be so maternal. You never struck me as the type.”

“I…” Cere finds she doesn’t know quite what to say to this, so she just grunts and says, “Shut up, Greez.”

He chuckles, but if he has anything else to say, he keeps his own counsel. The two of them take a seat on the plush fabric of the common room benches. Cere’s lower back twinges again--sitting on a backless stool for so long was a lot easier when she was younger

“So. What did you find?”

“You want the good news first, or the bad news?” She opens her mouth to respond, but Greez cuts her off with a nervous wave of his left hands. “Ah, you know what, never mind, it’s--it’s pretty much all bad news. The good we already know--this ain’t gonna kill him. The bad news is that these Winestock things--”

“Wyyyschokk,” she corrects, out of habit. It gets her another dismissive wave.

“Whatever. Basically, they don’t like to dine immediately after setting the table, you know? So their venom is meant to immobilize. They’ll pump their prey so full of the stuff that whatever they bite can’t move for days. Then they’ll bring it back to their nests and just kinda, uh...nibble on it for a while.”

Gray is apparently the color Latero turn when they’re feeling nauseated. Cere is similarly disturbed, but she frowns at this news for an unrelated reason. “If the venom is just a paralytic, then why is Cal in so much pain?”

BD-1 releases a series of beeps and trills, jumping off Greez’s shoulder to pace across the low table restlessly. Greez nods grimly. “I have no idea what any of that meant, but I’m gonna guess it was basically what it says in this _Galactic Geographic_ article here. Just--brace yourself. And do yourself a favor and don’t look at the pictures.”

Cere takes the datapad from him, holding it away from her body like one might an overheated blaster. In true _Geographic_ style, the article is wordy and difficult to parse, especially for her cortisol soaked brain. Greez helpfully summarizes, though his voice is uncharacteristically grave.

“It’s not really a paralytic. It’s a neurotoxin. Chemically I guess it’s, um… it’s not that much different than the stuff they use to torture prisoners of war.”

There’s a sudden ringing in her ears, a dull roar like she’s been submerged underwater. It makes her own voice sound a thousand miles away when she speaks, reading a highlighted passage from the article with all the inflection of a protocol droid. “As the body metabolizes the toxin, the pain response increases at a synchronic rate. This is speculated to be due to the--” she cuts herself, reading the detailed scientific breakdown that follows but not absorbing any of it. “This is saying it’s going to get _worse_?”

Greez takes the datapad from her hand before she drops it. “Yeah. Three to five days before it’s completely gone.”

Cere feels as though someone has upturned a bucket of ice water over her head. “Any other--” she clears her throat and clenches her fingers into fists on her lap. “Any other symptoms?”

“Oh, you know, the usual--fever, nausea, possible hallucinations. A real party, basically.”

Humor is his way of dealing with stress, she knows, but absolutely no part of her can find any of this funny. “How long till we reach Bogano?”

“Not long. Five standard hours, maybe.”

She nods, standing. “Notify me when we’re close. I’ll be in my quarters.”

Greez slides to his feet as well. His expression is troubled. “Cere...don’t beat yourself over this. It’s not your fault.”

“I know.” The lie comes to her easily. The comforting smile she has to dig deep for; her facial muscles just don’t feel up to it. “I’ll call if I need anything.”

“Yeah, okay,” Greez says, unconvinced, though he doesn’t try to stop her. “I’ll, uh--I’ll dig through some of the storage closets around here, see if there’re any other medical supplies lying around.”

Cere nods vaguely, already halfway down the corridor to her cabin. She hears BD-1 scampering down the hallway behind her; the little droid hops up onto her lap once she takes her seat on the upturned bucket once more. His antenna lie flat against his head as he peers down at Cal, beeping sadly.

Her grasp of Binary isn’t as solid as Cal’s, but she understands that the droid is worried. “He’ll be okay,” she says, as much to herself as BD-1. She repeats it, trying to force herself to believe it. “He’ll be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sort of basing the way Wyyyschokk venom works on our own real-world alien, the platypus. Did you know it's reportedly one of the most painful toxins in the animal kingdom? Apparently not even morphine touches it and it can last for days or even months. Crazy.
> 
> https://slate.com/technology/2015/06/platypus-venom-painful-immediate-long-lasting-impervious-to-painkillers.html
> 
> Working on part 3 now. Should be back to Cal's POV, if things go to plan.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you ever start writing a whump fic but then can't decide what kind of whump you want to include like 3/4 of the way through so you just kind of throw everything in there? Hi, welcome to chapter three of this fic.
> 
> CW: vomiting, asphyxiation, torture

Something is very wrong. Cal can feel it before he even opens his eyes. He has no sense of where he is, no anchor mooring him to reality. Even the Force feels wrong--distant, unfamiliar, an unknowable power that slips from his grasp as soon as he reaches for it. There’s only pain--a blinding, white-hot supernova of agony that starts deep in his arm and spreads, eating away at him like a blazing fire consuming a dry forest. Even when he does finally manage to open his eyes, the pain blocks out all other stimuli so that all he can see is too-bright light and the terrifying blur of a room he doesn’t recognize.

Someone is speaking. There’s a presence with him, somewhere nearby. A dark shape, haloed by the light. Cal can feel its energy all around him--a fierce, almost frightening strength, but compassion and kindness to balance the storm. Finally, something familiar, something he can hold onto.

 _Master,_ he thinks, and instinctively reaches out through their bond.

There’s nothing. A nothing so vast it hits him like a physical blow--just an empty void, severed strands of an inexplicably vanished connection floating out into a cold, unwelcoming abyss. He can _feel_ the warmth nearby, but it’s like placing his hand on sun-baked permacrete--it’s surface only, superficial, nothing permanent, nothing like it’s supposed to be. Their bond is immutable, it’s not supposed to be this way, this is all wrong--

Fresh pain--bright and sharp and relentless--reignites the inferno in his arm. It leaves him panting, breathless. _Master_ , he begs, ashamed by his weakness. He’s not a youngling anymore, he has to be strong. But he doesn’t know where he _is_ and his master isn’t here, not like he should be. _Master, it burns…_

He feels... _anger_ from the presence, radiating off it in waves. Anger, and disappointment, and shame. Cal cries out as the emotions envelop him, smashing against his mind like ocean waves, wearing down resistances that already feel paper thin. Is his master angry with him? What had he done? Is he being cast out? Is that why their bond is--?

A firing squad. An execution. His master’s blood under his fingernails. A silent explosion every time he closes his eyes.

His fault.

_I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…!_

The presence withdraws completely. It feels like it takes a piece of him with it when it goes, tearing away something bloody and vital and throwing him back into that endless empty space again, adrift and alone. 

_Master--!_

No one answers. 

~~~

Cal opens his eyes. Prauf is sitting in the corner of the room, hunched over, elbows on his knees. He looks tired, Cal thinks. He doesn’t remember what happened, but he must have hurt himself again, judging from the dull pain radiating from every bone in his body. It feels serious this time, he observes distantly--maybe he’d finally gone and karked up a jump, fallen off a scrapped AT-AT or something. For as much as it hurts, he thinks he should probably feel a lot worse--whatever the clinic meddroid had given him must be working. He feels...blunted, blurred around the edges, so that the pain is sort of a distant thing, far enough away that it could be happening to someone else. 

Strong stuff. Must be why he can’t remember much, either. Rationally he knows he should be worried--if he’d managed to damage his spine or neck, then he’d be a pretty useless rigger, and then what would he do? Bracca isn’t exactly the kind of place that caters to invalids. Concentrating, he manages to wiggle his toes underneath the blanket. For some reason, the sight makes him giggle.

Prauf looks up at the noise. “Kid, you okay?”

Cal lifts his left arm--whoa, that’s a lot of bandages--and points at his feet. “Watch,” he says, and does it again.

Prauf doesn’t seem particularly impressed. “You gotta be more careful, Cal.”

Cal’s attention is captured by his arm again. The pain there is weirdly insistent, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. “What happened?”

He thinks he remembers a forest--giant spiders and Wookiees and some kind of bird the size of an ARC-170--but he’s pretty sure that had been a dream. Bracca is all steel and welding slag; nothing green here except the stuff they sometimes serve at the cantina and have the nerve to call food.

Cal looks up at Prauf for answers--and recoils with a shout, pressing his back against the hard wall behind him as far as he can go.

Prauf has a lightsaber sticking out of his chest. 

“What happened?” the Abednedo echoes, incredulous, but gentle and patient as always. Blood dribbles out of the corners of his mouth.

“You got me killed. Remember?”

Cal surges over the side of his cot and violently throws up everything in his stomach. It isn’t much; he can’t remember the last time he ate. He can see Prauf’s blood on the floor, mixing with the puddle of sick. It’s too much blood, way too much--lightsaber wounds cauterize instantly, it wouldn’t have pooled like this. This looks more like he’s been stabbed, or--

“You got me killed, Padawan.”

No.

_No._

Cal can’t breathe. It feels like a giant hand has curled around his chest and is squeezing all the air out of him. He needs to vomit again but he can’t, there’s nothing left in him, just pitiful dry heaves that make his head pound and his eyes water.

“Kid. Kid, hey--Cal, you gotta breathe. It’s okay. Look at me.”

Cal shakes his head. No, no--he doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to _see_. The stench of blood and plasma bolts fills his nose with every inhale, coating the back of his tongue.

“It’s all right. Hey--come on, sit up for a bit.”

Hands grip his shoulders. Four hands. Two too many for Prauf. Too many for--

For--

Cal goes where the hands guide him, letting them manhandle him into a sitting position. After a minute the pressure on his ribs eases; it still hurts, but he can breathe without feeling like he’s sucking in oxygen through a straw. When he opens his eyes, Greez’s face swims into focus. The Latero is all but kneeling on the cot next to him, two hands still gripping his left shoulder to keep him upright. Cal chances a quick glance at the floor. There’s no blood--just the pathetic evidence of his apparently weak stomach.

“You okay, kid? Well--kriff, of course you aren’t, but I mean--you good? You need anything?”

Cal is pretty sure this is still a dream--or a hallucination. The real Greez would probably be yelling at him for puking all over the _Mantis’s_ floor, not hovering around his sickbed asking if he _needed_ anything. “Greez?” he says, feeling the name scape across his vocal chords like sandpaper. He coughs, and his head gives a nasty throb for his trouble.

“Yep, the one and only. Here--you thirsty? I’ve got water.”

The rim of a vacuu-flask is pressed against his lips--which, okay, it’s a little embarrassing, being coddled like this but also, he’s not sure he can hold the flask himself. He takes a few greedy sips, suddenly parched. The water is lukewarm, but it washes the sour taste out of his mouth, at least. Greez takes it away way too soon, tutting.

“Easy, you’ll make yourself sick again if you chug it like that.”

Now Cal knows he’s hallucinating. Greez is _fretting_ over him like a mother hen. That can’t be right. He lets the Latero help him lie back down, half expecting him to grow another head or morph into a giant spider and attack him.

Giant spider. Right. That happened.

His left arm throbs suddenly, and the memory of a much greater pain surfaces. He shivers involuntarily. That distant, floating feeling from before still lingers, along with the intuition that he should be feeling much worse. “You give me something? I feel...weird.”

Greez chuckles, but it sounds more nervous than anything else. “Yeah, found a few doses of Phenoplax in a closet--don’t ask.”

Cal hadn’t been about to--he’s too tired and wrung out to be curious. “Good stuff,” he mumbles, letting his eyes close again. 

“Yeah, maybe too good. You’re kind of burning through it faster than we should really be giving it to you. Think you could tell your metabolism to maybe slow its roll a bit?”

“Sure thing, Greez,” Cal says, now quite uncertain as to what he’s just agreed to. The pain and the panic from earlier feel far away now. He lets the drug pull him under without fighting it.

~~~

Later, he wakes up screaming.

The pain--

It’s excruciating. It’s never ending. His body is broken into a thousand splintered pieces and there are knives in his blood, carving their way out bit by bit. His arm has cracked open and spilled poison everywhere, and now it’s burning him alive from the inside out. 

“--can’t give him any more, not yet--”

“--have to do _something_ , Cere!”

Warm, coppery liquid floods his mouth. He chokes on it, cutting off another scream.

“ _Kriff--_ ”

There’s a quick scuffle. Hands grab his shoulders, rolling him onto his side. 

“Spit it out, Cal, don’t swallow. Good--”

There’s a sound of rustling fabric and when he’s rolled onto his back again, fingers grip his jaw and pry open his lips. Bactade fills his mouth, thick and chalky, then something hard that tastes like sweat and engine oil is thrust between his teeth. He gasps for breath around it, tears streaming out of the corners of his tightly closed eyelids to roll sideways down his face and into his ears.

Calloused hands on either side of his face. Freezing cold against his skin, so cold they almost burn. 

“Cal, listen to me. Reach out to the Force. Let it help you.”

He sobs and arches his back into another scream, muffled this time by the belt in his mouth. There is no Force. His whole world is fire and agony and it’ll never let him go--

Eventually he passes out.

~~~

Cal wakes again, later, shivering so hard he feels like he’ll come apart. His master’s corpse is on the ceiling, blood from a dozen close range blaster wounds dripping down onto his cot like warm rain.

He blinks, and the corpse is gone, but the blood remains. It’s on his hands.

It’s all over his hands. It won’t come off.

His vision turns red, then black.

~~~

A gentle hand in his hair rouses him. Cere’s voice shushes him when he tries to scream--his voice is gone, so it comes out like a death rattle.

“Shhh. This will help. Hold on, Cal, it’s almost over.”

She wipes something wet and cold across the crook of his elbow. The pinch of a hypo sliding into his vein, and then--

 _Peace_.

~~~

Waking this time is easy. The pain is gone, and Cal feels...good. Refreshed, even. Cere must have been telling the truth. The last of the venom seems to finally have worked its way out of his system. Cautiously, he rises from his bunk. He’s still a little sore, but otherwise feels no different than if he were getting over a particularly rough case of Corellian fever. He’s a little surprised to find that he’s alone. Cere and Greez must have been letting him sleep off the rest of that miracle drug, he figures, casting about for his shirt and slacks.

Then he stops and just...listens.

The _Mantis_ is totally silent. No hum of the hyperdrive engine behind him. No quiet voices filtering in from the galley. Have they landed somewhere? And what--left him alone to go on a supply run? No. That’s doesn’t seem right. He doesn’t remember much but he knows he’d been pretty out of it. Surely one of them would have stayed behind to watch over him while he slept, right?

“Beedee?” He calls out for the droid, searching the room for all his usual resting places. If Cere and Greez have both had to leave the ship for some reason, then BD-1 should still be here at least.

Nothing. 

Something feels...off. Cal shrugs into his clothes and makes his way out of the engine room into the hallway. Passing by Cere’s quarters, he knocks--but there’s no reply. Same with Greez’s. Reaching out with the Force, he doesn’t sense anything in particular that’s terribly amiss, but he’s still wrestling with unease when he exits the corridor and steps into the galley. The lights in the common area are dimmed, but everything looks exactly as it should--the kitchen table is littered with evidence of a previous meal, Greez’s plants are lush and vibrant behind the terrarium glass, and there even some Sabacc cards strewn across the table in seating area.

The only thing that’s missing is his crew. 

Cal bites his bottom lip, straining to recall his last lucid memory, but everything between getting bitten by the spider on Kashyyyk and now is lost in a haze of painful fever dreams. He’s forgetting something important, he can feel it, something that would explain this eerie feeling, this queasiness in his stomach.

The bridge is similarly deserted, no Greez in the cockpit or Cere at her comms station, no BD-1 scurrying across the dash. He scans the controls, the readouts and the schematics, searching for any clue to where they might be. When he glances up, stumped by the lack of information, he freezes. There’s nothing but darkness outside the viewport. It’s not the darkness of space--they’re definitely planetside somewhere, definitely stationary--but peering out into the depths feels just as empty, just as cold. Like the outside world just...doesn’t exist.

“This isn’t going to work, you know.”

Cal whirls around, hand automatically going to his hip for his lightsaber--but it’s not there. It’s--he doesn’t know where it is, he realizes, staring in horror at the woman standing in the galley as if she belongs there. 

Trilla smirks at him. “You can’t hide in here forever.”

“ _You._ ” A thousand different questions race through his head. “How did you--Where’s my crew? What did you do to them?”

“You don’t remember?” She descends the galley steps slowly, languidly. It’s so quiet, her footsteps echo like distant thunder. “Have you cracked already, Padawan? How disappointing. I was looking forward to a challenge.”

Nothing about this makes sense. Trilla’s words, her very presence here--this can’t be happening. How could he not have sensed her? Cal reaches for the Force again and finds the same, ever present hum of it all around him, but that’s _impossible_ . Trilla radiates dark energy--he’s fought her twice now, he recognizes her signature, the black mark she leaves on the world wherever she goes. He would have felt it the _instant_ she set foot on this ship. Reaching out further, he’s flabbergasted to find he can only connect to his immediate surroundings. There’s no feeling of something _bigger_ , the thread of the universe than connects like a spiderweb to all of creation, binding everyone and everything together. Everything in the _Mantis_ feels--static. Like a reflection, or a replica. He’s never felt anything like it, not even as an untrained initiate. Not even on Bracca, when his tenuous connection to the Force had practically atrophied from disuse.

“What did you do to me?” he growls. He needs to keep her occupied, needs to figure out a way to escape this trap she’s clearly laid for him--he can figure out _how_ she did it later. 

Trilla continues her advance, laughing as he retreats further into the cockpit, determined to keep some space between them. “Oh, what _haven’t_ I done to you, Cal Kestis. I had thought do to more but clearly my methods are far more effective than I’d thought.” 

“That’s not an answer.”

Her smile is all teeth. “Very well. I’d be _delighted_ to relive our time together. Shall we start with how I killed all your friends, right in front of your eyes?”

A cold shiver works its way down his spine. “No. You’re lying.”

Trilla’s gaze moves from his face to just over his shoulder and back. “See for yourself.”

Turning his back on her is a bad idea--his instincts are screaming at him to keep her in his sights--but Cal can’t stop himself from whirling around. 

The empty cockpit isn’t empty anymore. Greez sits slumped in the pilot’s seat, arms dangling limply at his sides. Hands shaking, Cal reaches out to grab his shoulder. Suddenly, foolishly, he hopes that this is a dream, that Greez will vanish at his touch. But the material of his jacket is solid, sturdy--it bunches up tightly under Cal’s fingers when he clenches his hand into a fist and gives the chair a hesitant push to swing it around.

There’s a small, perfectly circular hole through Greez’s chest.

Cere’s here too, now. Cal tears his gaze away from the Latero’s corpse, stumbling back several steps and almost tripping over her. She’s crumpled up beneath the holotable, arms lying limply at her sides, head bowed as if deep in thought. She’s--Cal shudders. Unlike Greez, she hadn’t been killed quickly. There are signs of torture--bruises, burn marks, patches of blood on her clothing--but if Cal could bring himself to look closer, to touch her, he’s sure he’d find the same lightsaber wound through her heart as well.

On the other side of the holotable, Trilla is holding one of BD-1’s legs.

“We scrapped this one for parts,” she says, carelessly tossing the dismembered limb onto the table. “The other two--well, I admit it was a bit wasteful, particularly with Cere. She could have been a powerful Inquisitor. Ah, well. Regrets.”

Cal can’t stop staring at the small, red and white striped droid component. There are little wires poking out of the severed end, like it had been ripped from its base. Bile rises in his throat and he chokes it down, eyes stinging. “This--this isn’t real.”

It just--it _can’t_ be. He doesn’t remember any of this happening but it’s right in front of him and the Force is barely a ripple in the back of his mind, not the flood he knows it should be. It’s telling him everything is fine but _nothing_ is fine--

“Well, of course it isn’t _real_.”

He jerks his head up to look at her, a spark of hope igniting in his chest, but it sputters out when she moves around the holotable, viper-quick, to wrap her fingers around his throat. Her momentum carries them both backwards until Cal’s shoulders slam into the bulkhead with a dull thud. Winded, he can only scrabble weakly at her gloved hand as she leans in, whisps of her hair tickling his neck, and purrs, “Where did you think you were this whole time, Padawan?”

There isn’t enough air. Cal can feel his own pulse thundering against Trilla’s thumb. “This--I’m dreaming. It’s just a dream.”

The Force throbs around her, dark and wrathful; her grip tightens beyond a normal human’s strength and he chokes, feeling the heels of his feet lift off the floor. The cruel satisfaction in her blue eyes makes them almost glow in the darkness.

“I told you--you can’t hide in here forever. Time to come back to reality, little Jedi.”

She releases him, and Cal slumps against the hard surface at his back, coughing wretchedly. The _Mantis_ tilts around him, blurring and sharpening into unfamiliar grays and reds. He tries to marshall his thoughts into some kind of order, to get his feet under him so he can run, fight, do _something_ , but he can’t move. There are restraints around his wrists and ankles, pinning him down.

A pitch black helmet with a red visor fills his vision. Trilla’s voice slithers out from under it in a sibilant hiss. “Awake at last. Do try to last a little while longer this time, won’t you? This doesn’t work quite as well when you’re unconscious.”

Movement in his periphery makes him jump--a Stormtrooper walks forwards and hands her a hypo, which she jabs into his left arm without warning or subtlety. Liquid fire spreads from the injection site like a lightning strike. He has no defenses against it; Cal shrieks and writhes in his bonds, pleading with someone--anyone--to end the pain.

Trilla has her hands in his hair in a mockery of comfort when he comes back to himself. “You know how to make it stop,” she coos into his ear. “Surrender yourself to me, to the Empire, and the pain will end.”

She’s lying. It’ll only stop when he’s dead.

Her hands tighten on his scalp when he says nothing. “Why do you resist? You have nothing left to fight for. This defiance is pointless.”

A memory rises to the forefront of his mind. A secret vault. A holocron. Hundreds of innocent lives hanging in the balance. 

There’s a long pause, and then Trilla _laughs._

“Oh, you poor thing. It’s far, far too late for that.”

Her hand snakes under his chin and wrenches his head to the side so he can see--

Cages. Row after row of holding cells, each one holding--

Children.

Something in him breaks. Cal reaches for the Force and gasps when it crashes over him, sweeping him away on a tide he can’t break free from, let alone control. When Trilla reaches for him again, he lets go, lets it explode out of him like a bomb. He hears screaming; he thinks it might be coming from his own mouth. Warnings from his youth rise up from the frantic maelstrom of his thoughts, old lessons cautioning against using the Force in this way--in letting _it use you_ \--

Cal doesn’t care. He’ll rip this whole place apart, even if it kills him.

Someone is trying to grab him, to hold him down. There’s almost nothing left of him but he pushes back, letting the Force surge through him in a concussive shockwave of pure energy.

Trilla might think she's won, but he'll die before he lets her turn him into a monster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) If you don't recognize the painkiller they keep giving Cal it's because I 100% made it up in a fit of rage after scouring Wookieepedia for 30 minutes, trying to find the Star Wars equivalent of morphine and failing miserably.
> 
> 2) Lightsaber wounds vs blaster wounds: I might be entirely making up the amount of blood spilled by both of these injuries but canon itself seems kind of confused at times, at least as far as lightsabers go (Obi-Wan ganking up that guy's steez in Mos Eisley and then one movie later, Luke losing a hand without a single drop of blood to be seen) so I'm not too pressed about it. *Hand wave* ~Artistic license~ y'all.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't been part of the Star Wars fandom since the 90s, so please excuse any lore or terminology discrepancies. I'm going off 20 year old memories and lots of Wookieepedia.


End file.
